Empty Space Meditation

''Empty Space Meditation'' is not anything special. At first, after skipping the pointless and long intro, the album actually seemed pretty good. The main riff was quite strong, very atmospheric and interesting, however I quickly came to realize that the album just gets worse and worse.

About halfway through the second track, the first real song, the clean vocals appear, and you instantly like the album less. It's not that they're bad, they are good vocals, it's rather the fact that they don't fit in with the musical theme and atmosphere, and comes across as incredibly forced and out of place. They're somewhat hard to explain, they almost sound like old blues vocals maybe? Some weird, spastic punk vocals? I genuinely have no idea how to categorize them, they're just so bloody strange. One thing I do know, however, they did not fit in at all, and totally ruins the atmosphere.

The rest of the songs aren't very interesting. It's clear that an attempt to create a sort of cosmic, hypnotising atmosphere or something, but it just doesn't work, the riffs are quite dull, they all blend together into boring, forgetful mediocrity. It sounds like a mix of ''Fallen from Firmament'' and the ''Darkspace'' albums, however without any of the creative elements. When I try to think back at what I heard, it's quite hard, there's just nothing that stands out or even makes a slight impression on you.

There are a few good things to say about the album, however. The production is ok, as in I can hear what's going on, the drumming is good, it fits with the atmosphere and feels natural. I must say that it does seem like they put a solid effort into this album, which is why I'm not giving it an even lower score. They do seem passionate about their album, and I do appreciate the fact that they tried to do something with the vocals, even though they were somewhat of a failure.

If this review seems a bit scarce, it's simply because there's nothing more to say. Apart from the weird vocals, there was absolutely nothing that stood out to me. At the first listen, the music was bearable. But on further listening, I just get really bored, and end up listening to something else.

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Let's make one thing absolutely clear. This is not the Urfaust you knew and loved. At best this album sounds like the sonic manifestation of complacency in terms of urfaust just imitating their past works with none of the good music or ideas and at worst it sounds like a poor copycat omitting all the actually interesting elements of their music.

First of all the production. It sounds too polished and shiny to carry any real atmosphere. It is to older Urfaust records what bands like Fides Inversa are to DsO. It is not significantly cleaner (or rather most of their past work is not significantly more lo-fi) but it is lacking in character. Hilariously enough it kind of sounds like urfaust are taking notes from that garbage "post-black metal" trend. I don't have much experience with those bands but I imagine they sound a lot like this album. And this is all the more laughable when you consider how many years ago urfaust were post-black metal with their innovative style.

Even if the music here was satisfactory I would consider the production to be extremely detrimental to the experience. Speaking of that however, there is almost not a single worthwhile musical idea to be found herein. The album just drones on and on for literally half an hour before anything even slightly exciting happens, and by that time you realize that just like the tracks that preceeded it, this track just pales in comparison to the band's previous efforts. Anything before or after that is not just lackluster in its execution, but flat out inexcusable in terms of songwriting or ideas. Just from the intro I could tell that this would be a boring record, as it showcases this exact lack of notable ideas. It's very uninspired and overstays its welcome. And what follows that is a monotonous sea of generic melodies that not much effort could have gone into composing as well as the most underwhelming vocals we've heard from Willem so far. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. Sometimes the guitars and blasting drums are in the front and sometimes the singing is. None of this matters however.

There is no substance to this record, just get Einsiedler and forget this even exists.